Religious Studies

Do God's emotions, desires, and commands determine what is morally good? And if so, must we take the idea of a potentially cruel God seriously? The contributors discuss these questions by dealing with the divine command theories, alternative approaches to a decidedly religious metaethics, and fundamental questions of theological ethics as a whole.

The Pericope Adulterae (John 7,53-8,11) has long puzzled scholars due to its contested textual status. Rayan J. Lobo shows that it can nonetheless be read meaningfully within its literary context as part of the Gospel of John - as a wisdom tale rooted in oral tradition and a Jewish trial of Jesus that summarizes John 7-8.

Daniel Maier offers the first comprehensive reconstruction and contextualisation of the earliest extant Christian vision of Paradise, as preserved in the complex transmission of the Apocalypse of Peter. He undertakes a detailed analysis of all extant witnesses, including the often-neglected Pseudo-Clementine framework of the Ethiopic manuscripts.

In the Bible, God appears visibly and audibly to particular people. This volume, a contribution to the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum, considers textual witnesses to epiphanies in the Septuagint — the most important texts of Hellenistic Judaism — and the New Testament, asking: How are these experiences presented? And what patterns of influence can be traced?